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Industrialized nations should think less about how they’re going to each reduce their individual greenhouse gas emissions, but rather focus on leveraging the weight of transformative technological innovation to create solutions for the big emitters in developing nations like China and India, according to Dylan Jones, president and CEO of the Canada West Foundation (CWF).

High-level officials from Environment Canada did their best to avoid answering direct questions last week on whether the country will miss its greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets of 17% below 2005 levels by 2020.

The first report from new Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development Julie Gelfand comes to many of the same conclusions as those from her predecessor. The Canadian government says climate change needs to be urgently addressed yet has done little to combat it.

The Conservative’s decision to align its greenhouse gas reduction targets with those of the United States has hampered the government’s ability to make meaningful progress in meeting emission targets, David McLaughlin, strategic advisor on sustainability to the Dean of Environment at the University of Waterloo, told the Canada 2020 conference last Friday.

The Ontario Power Authority (OPA) unveiled elements of its next combined heat and power standard offer program (CHPSOP 2.0) late last month. One of the key elements of the initiative is to limit ownership of agricultural industry projects such as greenhouses to site owners. This was flagged as a big concern by one company.